Smashing Pumpkins: 11 Essential Tracks All Fans Should Listen To
4. The Aeroplane Flies High
To think an artist would simply be pleased to have a song like this as their number one track on their breakthrough album. For the Pumpkins, this was just a b-side. Originally set to be put on Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness, it unfortunately didn't make the cut but is now a part of a stacked roster of b-sides. B-side or not, The Aeroplane Flies High stands as one of the greatest songs they've made.
The heaviest and darkest Pumpkins song, it embodies so many elements of what could have been; an evolution that never came. It's one part sludge guitar heaven with one of the best guitar riffs Corgan's ever made and one part slowcore builds filled with brooding atmosphere. Its enigmatic lyrics and unsettling sampled audio recordings feel invasive and confessional with lines like "I've always been afraid to die, but I think now I'm more afraid to live". Corgan's pessimism and pain are at its most bleak; his deliveries sound more akin to industrial singing rather than the angsty melancholy of his previous work.
It's a beautiful peak for the band artistically and sonically. Its intro staggers the listener only to finish like the calm of a storm after its wrecked havoc as it dies in quiet retrospection. Everything the Pumpkins were making at this point is perfected in this song with every member completely in unison.